I should have known it was going to be an odd week, when Monday morning came and I was pouring milk into the cereal and at the very bottom of the milk carton, I found this. Apparently when we had ordered pizza the week before, Jackson felt he needed to add one of his pepperoni to the milk and it had been in there for a few days unbeknownst to me. YUM! It actually scared the crap out of me and I screamed when I saw it. I thought something alive was crawling out of our milk carton while I was pouring. Having a toddler is never dull!!!
I knew it was going to be a low key spend time at home day because I offered to watch my neighbor Jessica's two littlest ones while she went to the dentist. I had them all morning on Tuesday and it was so much fun snuggling baby Hunter. He is just the sweetest little guy and fell asleep on me. I just sat on the couch with him snuggled up on me for a good hour or more. I couldn't move and although I had things I wanted to get done, I got my baby fix in! :)
Another day we watched my friend Tristan's girls while she was at the doctor. Jackson loves Bridget and we had her all morning, and Aidree is in Taylor's kindergarten class, so I picked both of them up and then had both girls for a few hours. It was so much fun and I love these cute little friends of Taylor's and Jackson's. These girls seriously play so well together, and rarely argue or aren't having fun together. It is such a blessing because for some reason Taylor can be pretty anti social with girls and she's finally found a little BFF.
I did some re arranging while Ben was at work. I moved the chair from our room down to the living room to the hole where the tree was. It just looked so bare and empty. Now I can put something on the wall above it and it will look so good. I feel like our living room is finally looking complete!
I moved my mirror to the place where the chair was. I will miss having a chair in my room, but I like the space for the mirror better because that mirror was in our closet and it was pretty squishy in there!
Ben's happy that half of his clothes aren't covered up by a mirror now. I figured since I knew I was going to be home for a while, I might as well get some stuff done that I'd been wanting to get done. I really do love home days. I'm getting more and more hermitish the older I get. I love me a good cozy home day! :)
Being at home this week also afforded me the time to make 175 mini cupcakes and whipped topping AND cupcake toppers for them all!!! It was a lot of work, but they turned out so good, and so cute!
It was all for that YW activity that we have coming up this week that Susan and I have been in charge of. We are introducing the theme for 2016. I just got square stickers and actually I already had them for my photography, and I never use them because they don't fit the discs, so I finally got rid of them! :) And they looked so cute stuck to little toothpicks!
Speaking of that activity, it was a success!!! WOO-HOO! The activity that we had planned to introduce the theme was an iron rod activity and it was pretty nerve racking because we were dependent on so many other adult leaders to help and do their part that we didn't know how it was going to come together until the night of. And it all came together perfectly, a few little hiccups of things that we would have done differently, but everything ran smoothly and the feedback I heard was that the kids really enjoyed it and got a lot out of it. Brother Draeger, the YM president made these pvc pipe rod holders that were awesome. When I saw those, I knew we were going to be just fine. And he got a rope and we strung it through the gym. And honestly, when I saw it all put together, It doesn't look like much. But since the kids are blindfolded, I knew that for them it would be a lot more difficult. We had 6 obstacles throughout the course and some obstacles were going through one of those kiddie tunnels, or having to maneuver over or around or through a pile of boxes and a big tire, or a whole bunch of hoses on the ground all piled up. Anyway, it was way fun. Every leader had a role. Every obstacle had a helper and a tempter. The helpers were there just to warn and whisper that they could get through whatever it was that they were facing. The tempters were there to tell them to just give up and let go and go around an obstacle. Some of the obstacles were just flat out lies by the tempters, like, 'let go and I'll give you a $50 gift card to best buy' or wherever. We, of course, put Ben as a tempter and he sat on a couch tempting them with playing video games and resting. At one point he even started playing music on his phone to tell them to come party with him. Needless to say, he was a great tempter. :) We had Dru Lopez as his counter part as a helper. It was great. Every leader did their role wonderfully! Brent McAllister was the one in charge of a repentance station. If a kid let go, I would lead them to the repentance station where they waited for the rest of their families to get. It was near the end. Once the kids got there, they were led off of the rod and Brent talked to them about the Savior and repentance and how when we let go of the rope, like all will do at some point in their life, repentance is the way to get back on. Then they were all put back on the rod as a family and finished, and went into the 'after life'. And this was Susan's work, she had set up the Primary room all white with white lights and we had pictures of the Savior and Temples and music playing and they got their little booklets that I made and pens and they were able to write down some of their feelings as they were on the rod, and at the repentance station and then as they walked into this peaceful room and were told, 'well done thou good and faithful servant'. And the spirit was really strong in that room. It was a great ending to the night. I'm so glad it was successful and the kids seemed to enjoy it and learn from it. Whew!
Other highlights of the week were:
-Youth Temple Trip on Thursday night. I love being in the Temple and I love being with the youth. Because of a scheduling mix up, I ended up being baptized, like I was one of the youth. Which was fine because we only had 2 girls there. Efrain Lopez was the one who baptized me and he is leaving on his mission next week, so that was cool. It was wonderful being in the temple with so many youth and leaders I just love from our branch and the Indiana branch.
-Kindergarten homework is the best! Well, I have a love/hate relationship with it. I love it when it's days like this, where Taylor gets to retell us stories she's learning at school:
This was the gingerbread man with the stick puppets she made at school. I kind of want to shoot myself when she has to sound out words, and then she gets frustrated and I get frustrated. It was much easier with Tucker, he loved to read and WANTED to learn. I don't think that she has any desire to read. But, we are getting there. Slowly and surely.
This guy finished the Chronicles of Narnia this week. I'm so proud of him and I love that he loves to read so much. We are currently reading the Lemony Snicket series, 'All the wrong questions' and it is such a fun book. He has a different book that he is reading, but this is one that we read together every night in his bed. I'll come and lay with him and we'll read. We're on book #3 out of 4. I can't keep up with him and books. I just went to the library and got a whole new stack of them, so I'm hoping they last a few weeks at least.
He was so proud, he came down to tell us when he was done.
Tucker had his last basketball game. I'm going to miss this little team, and all the fun families. I'm not going to miss being here every Friday night. Tucker had the BEST game. It was his best game of the season, and it made me sad that it was over. He even made 2 baskets.
I'm not going to miss trying to wrangle this one on my own. Since Ben was the coach, I always had the two littles on my own. I can't tell you how many times this one ran out on the court before I could catch him. Where was his MOTHER???
There's my #6!
Ben had a little after game, end of season cake party right there at the HUB. Here are Brayden, Tucker, Cody, Max, Tyler, Derek, Andrew, Corey, Henry and Chris. Cute boys waiting for their cake. I thought it was pretty genius to do it like this. We could do it right there in the HUB and get it over with right after the game. Ben bought a huge sheet cake and it was perfect and easy and cheap! :) And the boys loved it!
Ben gave them their little award and mentioned something about each one. I was so glad that all the parents loved Ben and he loved coaching and it was a great season and a great experience for them all.
And I'm also greatful that now my weekly schedule looks a little bit more like this and not so crazy busy! Although, it does seem to fill up pretty freaking fast, as I am sure is the case with most people. This {almost} blank week just made me happy to look at! :)
Saturday was a relaxing and a having a friend over kind of day. Tucker worked on his own mixel creations that he was pretty proud of:
I got ready for my hot date with Ben and took some selfies on the kitchen floor with Jackson:
We were supposed to go to the temple for our monthly Branch temple night. But there was some kind of miscommunication and Ben didn't think we were going. He is in the process of looking for a new work truck and I called him at 5:15, he was out running errands and we had to be at the temple at 5:30. Well, he was still in Coeurd 'Alene, so the temple was out. But we did go to dinner and shopping when he got home. It was a nice way to end the week. Even if it was more of a low key week, it's still nice to get out of the house with the hubs.
Tucker found my selfie stick and you can see Jackson was thrilled:
And my 3rd son, Owen.
It was a good week! Bring on another! :)
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